Page 41 of My Fae Lady

Making him uncomfortable, I could enjoy. Inflicting a little pain might even please me. But not the sort of torture that it would build into.

And it wasn’t like I wanted to be trapped in a bedroom with Sylvan. Since he couldn’t leave, I would.

I opened the door to the sitting room and stepped through . . . to the bedroom once more.

“House, please let me out.” I could see the sitting room. I stepped through, right back to where I had been. I met Sylvan’s eyes. “Maybe we both need to make the same request?”

“House, let her out.”

“Please,” I added before making a third attempt. A third failure.

Sylvan pressed his fist against his chest and bared his teeth. “I can’t leave her in peace, you idiotic bargain!”

“Maybe . . .” I licked my lips. “Maybe if we go to opposite ends of the room and face away from each other?”

Instead of answering, Sylvan stormed to the nearest corner and rested his forehead against the wall. I made my way to the corner diagonal from him and turned. I studied the design in the damask green wallpaper, but I couldn’t very well forget that Sylvan was there. And I certainly wasn’t at peace.

Pressure built inside of me, and I pressed a hand against my own chest, realizing that the bargain wasn’t punishing only the Unseelie fae at this point.

“It’s not working,” Sylvan snarled from his corner.

“I know!” The pressure had reached the point where discomfort was quickly becoming pain. It had to be worse for Sylvan. I closed my eyes and thought of the still waters of the pond behind the manor. The soothing chitter of birds in the spring. The scent of loam and fallen leaves that would now forever remind me of Sylvan.

The pain in my chest spiked, and Sylvan made a sound like an animal caught in a trap, pained and defiant all at once. “Giselle!”

“I can’t just be peaceful under these circumstances. I’m trying.”

“What is it going to take to make you peaceful?” His voice was slightly louder, like he was no longer facing the wall.

I spun around in my own corner. “For you to give up your claim to Rook Manor and leave.”

“Not going to happen. I will suffer through a broken bargain for eons first.”

I crossed my arms, though what I wanted to do was claw at my chest to get at the magic sending burning shards through me. “Same.”

We glared at each other and settled in to see who would break first.

Sixteen

Giselle

⊱❀⊰

I was slumped on the floor, my legs stretched out in front of me, my arms wrapped tightly around my middle as if I could hug the bargain magic out.

Sylvan, on the other hand, was pacing the room like a caged beast, snarling at nothing every few minutes, and wrenching at the door on every pass. The manor had stopped letting him open it an hour ago after he had slammed it in the frustration of a dozen failed attempts in a row to get to another room.

I didn’t understand how he could still move. It was all I could do at this point not to curl into a ball, though I was seriously giving that consideration. My blood felt like acid in my veins, sharp needles stabbed at every muscle, and I was shivering like I was naked in a blizzard.

On the plus side, I couldn’t feel my sprained ankle anymore. I struggled to hold on to any semblance of clear thought, but that hardly mattered. If I hadn’t been able to come up with a solution earlier, what chance did I have now?

Sylvan rattled the doorknob again, but when he let go, he didn’t walk away. Instead, he came closer to me, stopping a hair away from my bare feet. “We can break the bargain.”

“You did break the bargain,” I said through chattering teeth. “That’s the problem. You didn’t leave me in peace and now we are both suffering for it.”

“Not that kind of breaking. We can end the bargain. If we both agree, we can wipe it out completely. As if it was never there.”

I fought to give this suggestion due consideration. There were only two terms of the bargain left unfilled, since Sylvan had loopholed his way into staying at Rook Manor. Him leaving me in peace, and me giving him my firstborn. The latter didn’t matter. But should I allow him to wriggle out of leaving me alone?